Tseng Hsin-meng (曾新孟), 93, travels to a community center in Taipei’s Wenshan District (文山) every day, joining a group of senior citizens who have made friends and found a new purpose in life by helping baby-sit young children, as well as exercising and studying together.
The group says they owe it all to Shunxing Community Development Association director-general Shan Lien-cheng (單連城), 54, who founded a learning institution, Evergreen Academy (長青學苑), four years ago in the hope of enriching and bringing meaning to the lives of senior citizens in the district.
Recounting what inspired him to found the academy, Shan said he had always thought that his 90-year-old mother was living a fulfilled life, surrounded by friends of her age, until he accidentally ran into her one early morning four years ago.
“I was taking a stroll along the riverbank when I saw my mother there, alone, exercising,” Shan said.
That incident made him think of what he could do for his mother, as well as many lonely, socially isolated elderly people living in the community.
Shan then established the academy, offering a variety of interactive activities and free lessons, such as healthcare and medication safety, to senior residents at a community center in the district.
By embodying the Chinese saying: “Honor the aged of other family as we honor our own,” Shan has put a smile back on the faces of many elderly people living in solitude, including that of his mother, who is also a member of the academy.
In an effort to reach out to more community residents, Shan founded a childcare center in the community about two years ago, employing a number of preschool teachers to tutor and design activities for children.
He also adopted the multi-employment promotion program initiated by the Council of Labor Affairs to assist single mothers and economically disadvantaged women in getting back into the job market.
Not one to rest on his achievements, Shan said he hoped to carry on his dream of building a harmonious community for the elderly, children and women.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift